Happy Spring, and welcome to the first issue of Psychotherapy Bulletin for 2018! We would like first thank outgoing Editorial Assistant Dr. Elizabeth Coyle for her excellent service to the Bulletin, and to welcome new Editorial Assistant, Cory Marchi, MA. We would like to wish an especially warm welcome our new Domain Chairs, Representatives, officers, and other members of Governance, including our new Publications Board Chair, Dr. Laurie Heatherington, and SAP President, Dr. Michael Constantino. Finally, please join us in welcoming Dr. Terence Tracey to the Publications Board (and please see more about Terry in “Meet Your Newest Publications Board Member” in this issue).

As Dr. Constantino notes in his inaugural President’s Column (found at the beginning of this issue and online at https://societyforpsychotherapy.org/category/news-announcements/presidents-column/), 2018 marks the 50^th anniversary of the founding of APA Division 29. We at the Bulletin will be celebrating this milestone with a variety of special articles and online content—including a “digital scrapbook” where you can post your own memories and comments (www.societyforpsychotherapy.org/sap-50th-anniversary-digital-scrapbook). On a small celebratory note, we will be featuring the humorous artwork of Dr. Ragnar Storaasli in each of our issues for 2018; you can learn a little bit more about Dr. Storaasli and his work later in this issue (“Meet the Cartoonist” and online at www.societyforpsychotherapy.org/meet-cartoonist-dr-ragnar-storaasli).

Our Special Focus for this year is “Turning Points,” a theme that invites us all to reflect on moments when things changed for us—perhaps during our training, while conducting research, or in our practice. Sometimes these moments are big, flashy signposts taking us in an obviously new direction; sometimes they are more the quiet whisper of a corner we did not realize we were turning at the time.

For the field of psychotherapy, 1968 was perhaps a little bit of both. That year, under the leadership of our first President, Dr. Fred E. Spanner (1967-1968), Division 29 was founded. Sadly, co-founder Dr. Ronald Fox died on March 14, 2018; his Remembrance can be found in this issue and at https://societyforpsychotherapy.org/esteemed-national-leader-dr-ronald-fox/.

Fifty years, and innumerable other turning points later, this organization (renamed the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy in 2014) remains strong.

Our current mission statement reads:

A strong voice for psychotherapy and home for psychotherapists, the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy is committed to preserving and expanding the theoretical and evidentiary base for psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic relationships, supporting life-long learning of psychotherapeutic skills, as well as making the benefits of psychotherapy accessible to all. The Society is an international community of practitioners, scholars, researchers, teachers, health care specialists, and students who are interested in and devoted to the advancement of the practice and science of psychotherapy. Our mission is to provide an active, diverse, and vital community and to generate, share, and disseminate the rapidly accumulating evidence base in clinical science and practice.

After five decades, our commitment to psychotherapy remains strong, and this mission is carried out, day by day, across vast geographical spaces, in multidisciplinary settings, by SAP members and readers who come from different backgrounds, embrace different theoretical perspectives, and hold different intersectional identities. In this complex, diverse, and inclusive web lie both our strength and our future. We hope you will be a part of all that SAP is, and will help us shape what can be (for more thoughts on the future of psychotherapy, please see the Associate Editor’s Column.

Our next deadline is May 1, 2018; the remaining deadlines for the year are August 1 and November 1. Please consider joining the conversation through an article (submission guidelines and the online submission portal can be found at https://societyforpsychotherapy.org/bulletin-about/), comment, or suggestion.

We look forward to celebrating SAP’s 50^th with all of you,

Lynett Henderson Metzger, JD, PsyD
Psychotherapy Bulletin Editor
email: Lynett.HendersonMetzger@du.edu
office: (303) 871-4684

Cara Jacobson, PsyD
Psychotherapy Bulletin Associate Editor
email: chjacobson@loyola.edu
phone: (443) 520-2036

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